


After

by dafna



Category: West Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-31
Updated: 2007-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dafna/pseuds/dafna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oddly, it is Josh who C.J. hears from the most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

> A post-series West Wing snippet, written for Jae on her birthday.

Oddly, it is Josh who C.J. hears from the most.

It should be Sam. Sam, who is now back in California, because as C.J. could have told him, you really can't go home again. His office is just a few blocks away from hers, both in shiny mid-century buildings with all the personality of teeth whitener. If this were New York they'd run into each other all the time, but this is California and they never will. Even Sam's return is something she hears about from Josh, a rushed phone call too early in the morning.

"It's the damn weather, isn't it?" asks Josh. "What's with you West Coast people anyway, can't you take a little snow?"

C.J. winces at the pain in his voice and agrees that it is definitely the weather and that Sam is a wuss to leave after only 8 months and Josh clearly needs to hire more people who had been forced to walk in six-foot snow drifts to get to Con Law.

Josh starts calling her more frequently after that, and sometimes she even calls him. When you have $10 billion to give away, there are relatively few people with whom you can make casual chit-chat.

Both Abbey and the president send her long e-mails full of advice, both personal and professional. Abbey's tend to be more practical, full of specific things she should be eating and lists of underfunded doctors doing wonderful work on birth defects in East Africa. The president's are more rambling, equally as likely to be about a new John Adams biography or a rare bird sighting as who she should be talking to at Davos.

Toby doesn't call or e-mail for a full year, and then one day she runs into him at a conference in Chicago. He stares at her for several seconds, and then blinks and says, "give me your new cell phone number."

So now C.J. gets texts, often three or four at a time, and once, memorably, 12 in a row as Toby cast aside any pretense of abiding by the 160-character limit. The texts are sometimes pithy, sometimes profound, but mostly she suspects they are simply things he once would have yelled through the glass at Sam. At least once a month he is careful to mention Danny in some way, and C.J. understands that this is his way of saying that he understands.

Danny asks after Toby and Josh and the president, handing her the phone or a cup of tea or just waving at her over his laptop when she walks through the door, still talking on the phone. He tells her that she should really listen to Abbey's advice about getting enough iron and reminds her to send Margaret flowers for her birthday. He throws a blanket over her when she falls asleep at her desk and she returns the favor when he collapses after staying up all night on deadline.

"I miss all of you so much sometimes," Josh says once, breaking off abruptly from a rant about the mid-terms. "Do you ever miss ... I mean ..."

C.J. takes off her glasses and puts them on her bedside table, on top of the teetering pile of proposals to build water salination plants and birth control clinics. She stretches, one hand still holding the phone, and pulls the covers away from Danny, who obliviously snores on.

"Of course I do, Josh. Of course I do."


End file.
